The Presentation of Jesus at the Temple

Forty days after the Nativity of Our Lord, was presented in the Temple in obedience to the law She said there was no date for the submission of the child, but as the mother was unclean for forty days, and could not touch anything holy or go to sanctuary (Lev 12:2), during that time could not present the child in the Temple, as stipulated in Exodus 13,12: "Consecrate to God every firstborn". With this event completing the formalities of the Incarnate Word of God.
A little house in Bethlehem
The Sacred Family, left the cave and stood at a house in Bethlehem, which has fulfilled the rite of circumcision, which incorporates the Child to the chosen people. We know from the circumcision of John and the comparative history of these events, this is a time of meeting all the relatives and friends, but Holy Family is not on your land and this time do not involve the angels to announce the ceremony, and occur singly. Loneliness is the price we must pay great personalities, they have to endure all those who are out of the normal and ordinary.
In the most momentous moments of life when it most needs the man a social being, the company and the warmth of their own. I have felt this much in the solemnity of my silver anniversary of priests, far from my homeland and the heat of the presence of mine. In circumcision, Jesus, child of eight days (Lev. 12:8), it feels lonely, they feel qquienes are Joseph and Mary.
Jesus savor the bitter loneliness as an adult, many times, but in a unique and tremendous, the eve of his sacrifice in the Garden, surrounded by sleeping friends. Soledad, contemplated, will comfort the elect of all time.
But the temple was not like
Not so in his Presentation in the Temple. Motivated by the two holy Spirit elderly, Anna and Simeon, they reached the Temple, and illuminated by the same Spirit gave them heart jumped by which they recognized the Lord and proclaimed clamorous. There were two venerable elders were the most genuine representatives of the people of Israel, while representatives of all humanity. The Spirit does not sleep. The Spirit awakened. They had waited so long.
God keeps, always keeps his promises. Do not hesitate never, never fail not. It will, will not fail their promises. At the time we do not know, that only he knows. The Spirit awakened to those loved by God, to come out publicly to receive the Savior of the people.
Male and female. A new Kingdom
To represent Israel, a man was enough. To represent humanity also needed a woman, because when God made man became man and wife (Genesis 1, 27). Neither the birth of the Son of God was King Herod, in whose territory they were not in his presentation, officiated by the priest on duty showed up and the High Priest and the Sanhedrin. Began a new kingdom. Began to govern a new law.
According to him, and she did not have the prominence of earthly powers, but people living in the Spirit. Simeon prophesies, and touts the Baby Anne A man and a woman presented to Israel in the Incarnate Word. Two deep inner souls and make the presentation of Jesus to the Jews gathered in the Temple to participate in the offering of the morning sacrifice.
There will always be in the Church and deep inner souls in its strength, close friends of God, who will meet you, they shall give him shall proclaim and sing her wonders. Jose makes for an offering of five shekels, the redemption price paid by the father's firstborn (Num 18.16). While two doves or pigeons, and poor for the purification of the mother (Lev 12:18).
The people inside out today
The Christian people out today to meet the Lord with lighted candles, which festive and joyous rite symbolizing Christ, Light of the Nations, which characterizes this event as "Candlemas" or the Purification, because Mary also went to the Temple to purify, in compliance with the law, as we have explained. Then Jesus came not to break the law but to perfect it.
The Lord whom you seek
Malachi 3.1 casts its light over the entrance of the Lord in the Temple: "Suddenly we enter into the sanctuary the Lord whom ye seek." Jesus is in compliance with the prediction of the prophet. Seeking God is the transcendent task of man, but the man did not look if I had not already found, for if the man seeking God, God is looking more and before the man, wrote St. John of the Cross, so great seeker and sought at once. And sublimely found.
"Who is this King of glory? Is the Lord, brave hero, the God of hosts, the King of Glory" Sal 23. There is an ambassador being entered, or a designated representative, or a prophet, as so often has been sent, not even an angel, is the same God who comes in person.
The mystery hidden for centuries
But therein lies the mystery of God, who wanted to participate our own flesh, as a member of the same human family, to death and dying, destroying the power of death, and death not only from her womb, suffering Death itself to defeat in his own domain, but him who had the power of death, the devil.
Because he had to look at all his brothers in the flesh and death, to compadececerse of our weakness and our slavery to atone for the sins of the people, as evidenced by the Hebrews 2,14.
He can sympathize because he has suffered. Do you know who has not suffered! -tell who both suffered as St. John of the Cross, because the condition for him was the way the discovery of great riches. "If I knew, my sister, the delectable joys that God rewarded the sufferings of that prison," he admitted talking to his cell in Toledo. And sing in the Flame: "O gentle hand! Delicate touch Oh!, / That tastes of eternal life / and pays all debts ...
Utopia sterile
"Who can endure the day of his coming?" Who shall stand when he appears? ". "What is man that thou art mindful of him?" (Ps 8:5). Before God every knee should bow in heaven, on earth, into the abyss. Humility, then, because we are all sinners. Before him there is no pride, but the deepest gloom, full of confidence.
Purify us, Lord, for our sins. For you alone are holy. "It will be a refiner's fire, a laundry bleach. Purify his blood shed on the cross, which will pour in baptism and the sacrament of forgiveness. With its sacraments purify his people. With his cross, with its trials and tribulations, expiate the sins of the people. Want to save humanity by another road and through other channels, is a utopia that always fail.
"We have to glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is salvation, the glory, the resurrection. He has saved and liberated " (Gal 6:14).
The renovation is expected
Pope recently said that the devil is furious because he is fighting the last battle, as the Kingdom of God is near. For that "Refine the sons of Levi".
The Levitical priesthood, which was old, will be renewed, recreated as an extension of his eternal priesthood that will offer the unique offering that can erase sins. This offering will please the Lord. Because it will not be sacrificed animals, but Christ himself. As he offered his own life, should we offer our own. As practiced by men, they can age the Christian priesthood, and will need to renew and purify, especially from the interior.
Spiritual worship
The Second Vatican Council has appreciated the theology of the spiritual worship of Christians, for the sacrifice that pleases God is man, as a living sacrifice offered to God, as St. Paul exhorts us: "I beseech you, brethren, to present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, which is the cult that you must offer" (Romans 12:1).
We must be careful with love, to offer God from morning till night, our thoughts, feelings, desires, plans, failures, joys, sickness, tears and sadness, and all the virtues that life will provide the opportunity to practice , and all the battles that we hold, to unite them with Christ's sacrifice on the altar renewed. That's the gift that pleases the Father, who seeks worshipers in spirit and in truth.

The arrival at the temple

Jesus comes into the arms of Mary,
Look, yawns and continues sleeping;
His father Joseph was looking smile.
Under the Act, at forty days.
The priest offers the Victim
Ignoring what is happening
Mary knows that it is redeeming
In a gesture of love and the Eucharist.
The hells are beginning to worry
Feeling that his lie will end.
Simeon just going to prophesy:
Division, sword, light and darkness.
Who militate in each flag?
The Kingdom of Christ is about to begin.

God keeps his promises
Simeon supernatant into joy, says the Lord: Lord, you have fulfilled your word. You promised you would die before the Savior. "You can let your servant depart in peace. For my eyes have seen the Savior". Lk 2:22. Many desires and hopes and prayers reveal these words! Of Simeon and all of Israel, whom he represents.
The history of Israel was neither sterile nor futile: his eyes have seen the Savior, and knows he has already reached the triumph of life, because the Baby Jesus will grow and the hour of his sacrifice, with which redeem all people, not just to Israel. "This is because many in Israel to fall and rise, like a flag will be discussed. And a sword will pierce your soul." When a man is a calamity occurs, every attempt must not know his mother.
Mary was the exception. That must be to make it redeemer. She is the sign of the Church carries the grace of the Redeemer and, consequently, is converted, as he, as a sign of contradiction. The five courses offered by the parent, are a substitutionary sacrifice, until it comes to the sacrifice of Calvary, where there will be no replacement.
Christ will then be slaughtered and not replaced, but replaced all his brothers, accompanied by suffering and pain of Mary with the pierced heart, symbolized today by the pigeons slaughtered and burned in a holocaust. "Without shedding of blood there is no redemption" (Hebrews 9:22).
Souls Deep
Simeon and Anna embody, their lives and ministries they performed, the Jewish society that looked for redemption and liberation of the people. They are the most vivid example of Israel who waited until the last minute intervention of God in this human history to make it more livable, more just, more balanced.
The old Simeon and Anna are a symbol of that hope is a long journey, while the elderly witness who has fallen in the people of Israel in its structures and practices in their religion and their law. All Jewish religious and social model needed to be designed differently and therefore for the two characters in the Gospel story man and woman, for these two old, it was necessary that someone were to introduce a new and final time. Someone who came to inaugurate God's time.
The encounter with Jesus
To see Jesus, meet him, have contact with his person, by word and their work should lead us to act like Simeon. Meet Jesus should make us men and women trained to proclaim by word and especially with our actions, the time of God that Jesus has given us.
The Church is called to give testimony for God's time. We have to enable that time to reach our people with all its consequences. We must commit ourselves to this new time integration and, livable and credible in our communities through the love of God given in full through the incarnation of Jesus in our human history.
So Pope calls us to serve the Internet now, because history of evangelization is not just a question of geographic expansion, since the Church has also had to cross many cultural thresholds, each of which has required new energy and imagination to proclaim the Gospel.
The era of great discoveries, the Renaissance and the invention of printing, the Industrial Revolution and the birth of the modern world were also critical moments, which demanded new forms of evangelization.
Internet is a new "forum" understood in the ancient Roman sense of public place where it was politics and business, religious duties were fulfilled, developed much of the city's social life, and manifest the best and the worst of human nature. It was a place of crowded and bustling city, which not only reflected the surrounding culture, but also created a distinctive culture.
The same applies to cyberspace, which is a call to the great adventure of using its potential to proclaim the Gospel message. This challenge lies at the heart of what it means, at the beginning of the millennium to follow the commandment of the Lord "into the deep": "Duc in altum" (Lk 5, 4). Internet produce countless images that appear on millions of computer screens worldwide.
In this galaxy of sight and sound will the face of Christ and hear his voice? Because only when you see his face and hear his voice the world will know the glad tidings of our redemption. This is what make the Internet a genuinely human space, because if there is no place for Christ, there is no place for man.
Therefore, I encourage the whole Church bravely to cross this new threshold, to enter into the deepest part of the network, so that now, as in the past the great engagement of the Gospel and culture may show to the world "the glory of God in the face of Christ "(2 Cor 4, 6). May the Lord bless all those who work for this purpose, said John Paul II.



Prayer
All-powerful father,
Christ your son became man for us
and was presented in the temple.
Mat he free our hearts from sin
and bring us into your presence.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
AMEN

References: Catholic.Net